Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Home to roughly 12.5 million people, Rwanda is a country in Central Africa that is known as the “land of a thousand hills” due to its rolling, lush landscape. What do you know about the country of Rwanda? What do you know about Central Africa? Share with the class your knowledge about this fascinating country and region.

Teaching Suggestion: Encourage students to consider the history, culture, and geography of the country of Rwanda. For example, students may have heard of the groups Hutus and Tutsis and know that they were once at war. Students may have heard of the movies “Hotel Rwanda,” “Our Lady of the Nile,” or “Gorillas in the Mist.” Introducing additional information may help to contextualize the book; for example, Rwanda’s varied geography features the peaked Virunga mountains in the western part of the country and flat savanna in the east. In addition to growing and exporting coffee and tea, one of the most important sources of revenue for Rwanda is tourism, since Rwanda is just one of two countries (with Uganda being the other) where Virunga mountain gorillas can be visited by casual observers touring the country. Discussion and investigation can provide some general context about the rich, vast history of this small African nation.

• Visit Rwanda offers this 1-minute video entitled “The Land of a Thousand Hills,” created to promote travel in the region.
• This 4.5-minute 60 Minutes clip, “How Lesley Stahl Got up Close with Mountain Gorillas in Rwanda,” features the reporter’s trek to see a family of the gorillas and comments on their similarities to humans.

2. Spanning from 1990 to 1994, the Rwandan Civil War arose from a long-running conflict between the Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups. While this war was a type of civil war—a dispute between two factions of a single nation—it also is considered a genocide because the war specifically targeted a group of people (the Tutsi population) for eradication. Considering what you have learned about the Holocaust and other historical genocides, what factors do you think impact the circumstances under which a genocide begins?

Teaching Suggestion: The American Federation of Teachers provides a guided framework for teaching students about the difficult subject of war and genocide entitled “To Repair the World: Becoming a Human Rights Defender.” You may decide to share with the class the “What can students do?” information, which provides ways to be involved with activist groups that fight for human rights, including the International Alliance to End Genocide.

• The BBC’s “How Do You Define Genocide?” considers the factors involved in defining the “gravest crime against humanity.”
• The non-profit group Genocide Watch identifies “Ten Stages of Genocide,” which are phases that occur prior to genocide. Students might review the list and discuss these stages as evidenced in the Rwandan genocide.
• Students might discuss as a class the article “We Are Living in the Age of Civil War” in The New Republic, which examines how warring factions within a single nation is a type of conflict on the rise.